How To Make A Million Before You Turn 20

While their peers were out making trouble, these young achievers were making bank. The Forbes magazine in search of the secrets to entrepreneurial success peaked into inspirational lives of the whiz kids who build million-dollar enterprises before the age of 20.

Money did not come to them like a bold from the blue. It was not inherited from their grandfathers or received as a gift from their parents.

All of them started at the age of 15 or younger. While most of them were making a mint on the Internet, one of them was doing things the old-fashioned way. In 2002, at the age of 14, Fraser Doherty started making jams using his grandmother’s recipes in his parent’s kitchen in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Friends and neighbors loved them a lot and later started making orders faster than he could produce them at home. With time he became famous for his culinary skills all over the region. Since the production of jams was growing Doherty rented time at a 200-person food-processing factory several days a month.

By age 16, Fraser left school to work on his jams full-time. In early 2007, Waitrose, a high-end supermarket in the UK, approached Doherty, to sell his jam products in their stores. Within months jams were on the shelves of 184 stores.

Doherty borrowed 5,000 pounds from a bank to cover general expenses and focused on production of three flavors: Blueberry & Blackcurrant, Rhubarb & Ginger and Cranberry & Raspberry.

Tesco supermarkets also entered into a contract with Fraser, to sell Doherty’s products in 300 stores across the UK. In March, 2008 Doherty’s launched in Ireland.

Last year Doherty’s jams hit $750,000 in sales and is on track to double that in 2008. Doherty’s 100% stake is worth around $1million to $2 million. Not bad for a 19-year-old. Doherty’s advice: “Have an attitude for adventure and enjoy the journey”

Cameron Johnson was 9 years old when he launched his first business making invitations for his parents’ holiday. By the age of 11, he had saved up several thousand dollars selling greeting cards. He set up his own company named it Cheers and Tears.

But he did not stop there. At age of 12 Johnson offered his younger sister $100 for her collection of 30 Ty Beanie dolls. The young entrepreneur quickly earned 10 times that amount by selling the dolls on eBay. Smelling potential, Cameron contacted Ty and began purchasing the dolls at wholesale with the aim of selling them on eBay and his Cheers and Tears Website.

In less than a year, Cameron earned $50,000 seed money for his next venture My EZ Mail, a service that forwarded e-mails to a particular account without revealing the recipient’s personal information. Within two years My EZ Mail was generating up to $3,000 per month in advertising revenue.

In 1997, Johnson joined forces with two 15-year-old entrepreneurs for creating an on-line advertising company called Surfingprizes.com. Those who downloaded the software received 20 cent per hour for having ads splay across their computer screens. These 20 cents is a tiny fraction of the value to the advertiser.

The boys employed a classic pyramid strategy to spread the service. Users who refer Surfingprizes.com. to a new customer would nab 10% of that new person’s hourly revenue. Soon Cameron partnered with companies such as DoubleClick, L90 and Advertising.com that could sell the ads for them.

«I was 15 year old and receiving checks of $300,000”, says Cameron. At 19 he sold the company and software (but not the customer database) to an undisclosed buyer. “Before my high school graduation, my combined assets were worth %1 million”, says Johnson.

At 15, Catherine Cook and her 17 year old brother Dave came up with the idea to develop a free interactive online version of high school photo albums. All American students have such albums that contain school photos, articles form school newspapers, diplomas and detailed student portfolio.

In 2005, their brother Geoff invested $250,000 into that protect and helped them launch a social networking site, MyYearbook.com.

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